Umeboshi Onigiri
by Aria Illusine
Summary: AU Non-Mass ItaSaku ficlet, “Umeboshi onigiri, again,” Sakura said with a soft chuckle as she handed her dark-haired Uchiha a glass of green tea and one of the onigiri. An everyday lunch at the hospital....Complete


Aria's ItaSaku muse has struck again!

I can't really remember what brought this on...I think I was surfing Narutopedia to figure out Sakura's favorite foods...suffice it to say that my ItaSaku muse just went with this one and forced me to crank this out in an hour. This is completely not the original storyline (which involved team seven, a series of arguments, a very introspective kakashi, and a six-tiered bento box o.O) but I think this one turned out better ^^

Yuka's made up, just in case you're wondering. Just a small ficlet with some cute fluff and a badly executed attempt at wry humor. I apparently have no talent for humor.

Summary: A little explanation on why Sakura's lunches at the hospital with her boyfriend most often end up being the simple food known as umeboshi onigiri (triangle-shaped rice wrapped in seaweed and stuffed with pickled plum things).

Disclaimer: Sakura and Itachi are sadly not mine but rather the property of Kishimoto, and the clean-desk and clean-floor policy joke comes from a book entitled Thud by Terry Pratchett in reference to Commander Sam Vimes' office.

Enjoy!

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**Umeboshi Onigiri**

"Sakura-chan, are you…eating at the hospital again?"

The rose-haired medic in question smiled, nodding her agreement as she pulled a by-now-familiar-to-all bento from her bag, unperturbed. She got this question all the time.

The head nurse, Yuka, sighed, clucking like a mother hen as she patted the younger woman's hand in a there-there sort of way. "For a clan heir he really doesn't stretch his wallet…"

"Yuka-san, I really don't mind," Sakura interrupted quickly, her cheeks tinged pink at the start of a rather old conversation. "I like it better this way, you know."

The other women in her office inclined their heads in various states of agreement.

It had started with just herself and Yuka when she'd begun dating the Uchiha clan heir months ago, and had somehow escalated in weeks to being a full-blown but rather impromptu female-medics-in-relationships gathering that cloistered itself in Sakura's office – hers being the largest as head medic of the emergency ward – during the hour of lunch break whenever Sakura wasn't the on-call medic. Usually it was just a casual time for them to check up on latest relationship updates – it was how Sakura had found out about Inuzuka Hana's engagement before the woman's own brother – and chat, or vent, about the silly things their boyfriends did. But recently Yuka had noticed Sakura's increased number of bento lunches at the hospital and had felt the need to ask.

Sakura hadn't minded the questions much, they were just Yuka's way of showing she cared, but Yuka's occasional comments that perhaps her boyfriend was being stingy…Sakura did not permit those.

"Sakura-chan, sometimes I think you have the weirdest quirks for a dating woman," Yuka said, not unkindly. "Well then, we'll get going…."

The women slipped out of the office, exchanging rather significant looks as they made a quiet crowd heading out the building.

Alone in her office at last, Sakura let a contented sigh fill the silence as she cleared some desk space and began to unpack her lunch, waiting.

It took him three minutes.

"You always seem to know when they're gone," she said with a soft laugh, not even bothering to look up. "I'm beginning to think you have this place bugged or something."

"I might," was his noncommittal reply, a gentle smile lighting his features as she turned to face him.

"Don't say that so seriously," she teased, leaning into the arm that wrapped around her waist, "Or I'll really start believing you. You know I'd tear my office apart if I thought you had it bugged."

Her lips twisted into a mock-pout that didn't fool him for a second. "And I just got this place organized."

Itachi didn't even bother trying to silence the sound that would have been a snort of disbelief from a less distinguished individual.

Sakura was a neat person, tidy both at home and at work, but the position of head medic came with mountains of paperwork that piled up faster than Sakura could evaluate them. Still, she had a rather effective clean-desk policy already implemented. It was the clean-floor policy that eluded her now. The three stacks of papers opposite her bookshelf of medical references were already beginning to meld into each other; Itachi was certain that if she didn't deal with them soon, they would be one huge pile by this time next week.

Anyway, it didn't matter if she tore this place apart looking for a nonexistent chakra link to him. He didn't have one in her office; it would have been an invasion of her privacy.

He merely scheduled his ANBU training sessions with his team so that they stopped for lunch about five minutes before her break began, and then sat in the tree shading her window, waiting until he felt all the chakra signatures in the room leave but hers.

It was less of a waste of chakra this way.

"Umeboshi onigiri, again," Sakura said with a soft chuckle as she handed her dark-haired Uchiha a glass of green tea and one of the onigiri.

"Do you mind?"

She shook her head, strawberry strands of hair tickling her blushing cheeks. "You know I don't," she assured him, taking a bite of her own onigiri with obvious pleasure.

"Aa, but from the wrinkle _here_," he tapped her forehead with a teasing smile, "I thought Yuka-san might have implied I was being cheap again."

"Well she might have," Sakura replied frankly, taking a sip of her drink, "but she just doesn't know."

Itachi raised an amused eyebrow as he chewed a bite of his own lunch. "What have you not been telling them?"

Sakura smiled impishly.

"That you make the onigiri yourself in the morning before walking me to work because you think I stay up too late at the hospital, never mind that I easily make lunch for myself when you're on missions and I'm in Konoha, or that _I_ was the one who selfishly decided to start our little tradition of eating bento lunches together, or even that I love having umeboshi onigiri no matter how often you pack it because," her fingers laced with his, "it's something that combines both our favorite foods and a meal we can always share, together?"

Itachi murmured amused agreement into her hair as he pulled her closer to him, nibbling a stray grain of rice that clung to her bottom lip before swallowing away the morsel and pulling Sakura into a proper kiss.

Affectionate interlude having passed, they continued their meal in companionable silence, enjoying the other's mere presence.

As they finished up, Sakura offered her boyfriend the last of the tea as she packed up the now-empty bento, smiling as she handed the box to him.

"You do realize," he told her with a pleasant smile of his own, "that the entirety of your little female entourage has been eavesdropping on us for the entire duration of our meal."

The young medic laughed. "Of course," she replied, ignoring the waves of consternation suddenly radiating from under her office windowsill. "I've worked with them all so much that I can tell their chakra signatures from nearly a mile off."

"And you don't mind them finding out about our lunch traditions?"

"They were bound to eventually. This just speeds up the process a little."

A soft expression of amusement curved his lips. "You really are a wonder," he said, callused fingers gently tracing meaningless shapes on her waist.

Sakura's eyes sparkled with happy mirth as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled her boyfriend down for another kiss, "And so are you."

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Now that I think about it, those last two lines remind me very much of the ending to Diana Wayne Jones' book Castle in the Air (sequel to the famous Howl's Moving Castle) so uh...disclaimer on that too ^^;

Umeboshi happens to be one of Sakura's favorite foods, and is a rather common addition to onigiri, which happens to be Itachi's favorite food. So...here you have a meal they can, and in the case of this ficlet, do share together rather often.

Please review, comments and such welcome ^^


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